urselves out in nature, with a joyful and delirious abandon,
we regretted that our eyes could not penetrate to the innermost parts of
the rocks, to the bottom of the sea, to the end of the heavens, in order
to see how the stones grow, how the breakers are made, how the stars are
lighted; we regretted that our ears could not catch the rumour of the
fermentation of the granite in the bowels of the earth, could not hear
the sap circulate in the plants and the coral roll in the solitudes of
the ocean. And while we were under the spell of that contemplative
effusion, we wished that our souls, radiating everywhere, might live all
these different lives, assume all these different forms, and, varying
unceasingly, accomplish their metamorphoses under an eternal sun!

But man was made to enjoy each day only a small portion of food,
colours, sounds, sentiments and ideas. Anything above the allotted
quantity tires or intoxicates him; it becomes the idiocy of the drunkard
or the ravings of the ecstatic. O, God! How small is our glass and how
large is our thirst! What weak heads we have!

CHAPTER V.

RETURN.

In order to return to Quiberon, we were compelled, on the following day,
to arise before seven o'clock, a feat which required some courage. While
we were still stiff from fatigue and shivering with sleep, we got into a
boat along with a white horse, two drummers, the same one-eyed gendarme
and the same soldier who, this time, however, did not lecture anybody.
As drunk as a lord, he kept slipping under the benches and had all he
could do to keep his shako on his head and extricate his gun from
between his feet. I could not say which was the sillier of the two. The
gendarme was sober, but he was very stupid. He deplored the soldier's
lack of manners, enumerated the punishments that would be dealt out to
him, was scandalised by his hiccoughs and resented his demeanour. Viewed
from the side of the missing eye, with his three-cornered hat, his sabre
and his yellow gloves, the gendarme presented one of the sorriest
aspects of human life. Besides, there is something so essentially
grotesque about gendarmes that I cannot help laughing at them; these
upholders of the law always produce the same comic effect on me, and so
do attorneys for the king, magistrates, and professors of literature.

Tipped to one side, the boat skimmed lightly through the foaming waves.
The three sails were comfortably swelled; the masts creaked and t